Dr. Ma has been a leader of the biofilm research group at Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Science (IMCAS) at Beijing since 2010 and a Professor of University of Chinese Academy of Science (UCAS) since 2016. Her research aims to define molecular mechanisms of biofilm formation and bacterial cell-cell communications in order to develop novel anti-biofilm strategies and to explore potential applications for bacterial biofilm. With over 75 peer-reviewed publications in the field of microbiology, her seminal findings are about the formation and regulation of biofilm matrix and its disassembly. Her representative works have been published in journals such as Nature communications, Cell research, PLoS pathogens, etc.